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WCW Monday Nitro
WCW Monday Nitro (or simply Nitro) is a professional wrestling television program that was produced by World Championship Wrestling and broadcast weekly every Monday night on TNT from September 4, 1995 to March 26, 2001, when WCW's assets were purchased by the WWF. For its entirety, the program went head-to-head with the World Wrestling Federation's (WWF, now WWE) Monday Night Raw. Created by Eric Bischoff and Ted Turner, the debut of Nitro began the Monday Night Wars, a television ratings battle between the WWF and WCW that saw each company resort to cutthroat tactics. Although comparable to Raw in popularity from the beginning, Nitro began to dominate its rival in television ratings, based largely on the strength of the New World Order (nWo), a rebellious group of wrestlers that wanted to take over WCW. Beginning in June 1996, Nitro beat Raw in the ratings for 83 consecutive weeks, forcing WWF owner Vince McMahon to usher in the more adult-oriented "Attitude Era". As the nWo storyline grew stagnant, fan interest waned and Raw began to close the ratings gap. In April 1998, a few weeks after Stone Cold Steve Austin won his first WWF Championship, Raw beat Nitro in the ratings for the first time in almost two years. The shows would continue to trade ratings wins back and forth until November 1998 when Raw pulled ahead of Nitro for good. Besides broadcasting from various arenas and locations across the United States and Canada (such as the Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota, from which the very first episode was broadcast), Nitro also organized special broadcasts from the Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando in 1996, aired annual Spring Break-Out episodes from Panama City Beach, Florida or South Padre Island, Texas starting in March 1997, and filmed some episodes in Australia and the United Kingdom during the fall of 2000. The rights to Nitro now belong to WWE. As of June 30, 2016, all episodes have been made available for streaming on the WWE Network. WWE has also released three Best of WCW Monday Nitro DVD sets. On-air personalities Commentators * Eric Bischoff (September 4, 1995 – November 18, 1996) * Steve "Mongo" McMichael (September 4, 1995 – May 13, 1996) * Bobby Heenan (September 4, 1995 – August 2, 1999) * Tony Schiavone (May 27, 1996 – March 26, 2001) * Larry Zbyszko (May 27, 1996 – March 29, 1999) * Mike Tenay (September 2, 1996 – November 13, 2000) * Mark Madden (April 10 – September 11, 2000) * Scott Hudson (April 10, 2000 – March 26, 2001) * Stevie Ray (July 18 – December 12, 2000) * Disqo (January 8, 2001) Ring announcers * David Penzer (September 4, 1995 – March 26, 2001) * Michael Buffer (select main events only, May 12, 1997 – March 26, 2001) Trivia * On March 26, 2001, Monday Nitro was ended the program to air on TNT for eighteen years and All Elite Wrestling will return for a two-hour weekly TV show, and later was called All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite beginning October 2, 2019. External links * WCW Monday Nitro on Wikipedia Category:World Championship Wrestling television programs